Friendship

I really enjoyed this book. Compulsively readable, because the alternating chapters made you keep going to find out what happens next. It's amazing that despite the disparity in the girls' situations, you feel equally empathy for both. It takes a deft hand to do that. ( )

"Fifteen Lanes" is told through the eyes of Ellen and Noor, teenagers living in Mumbai, India. Ellen's family has wealth, while Noor's has none. Despite their differences, both young women want and need friendship and courage to move forward in their lives. ( )

Noor is living in the fifteen lanes in Kamathipura, Mumbai's red light district. She is fourteen years old and will someday inherit the destiny of her mother, a prostitute. She is a devadasi, and that is the way of their heritage. Noor has a sister, Aamaal and a brother, Shami. Shami has been born with HIV, so he is a sickly child.
Grace lives across the city in a more privileged section of India. Grace is rather a loner, but has an incident with someone on a cell phone where she reveals herself and ends up paying an outrageous price for such at school.
The two girls meet in a program where Grace and VJ Patel are helping young girls growing up in the red light district. They become friends.

This was such an interesting and thought-provoking book. The author works with actual victim's of this way of life. It is so hard to believe that people are forced to live like this in today's world. ( )

Review: Fifteen Lanes by S. J. Laidlaw.

I received this book from the Early Reviewers and it was a moving story about the lives of two very different young girls. The book was well written; the plot feel into place and the story was strong and emotional. The author was creative the way she entwines two cultures, time, two living situations and the relationship of these two young girls when they meet. The girls journey’s through a difficult time was never made easy, however, they show strength and determination in a way that the reader understands where their dilemma’s started.

Noor is fourteen-years-old living in a brothel where she was born in Mumbai the red-light district. She is so scared that her destiny will follow her mother’s fate, desperate and trapped in the city’s sex trade. Noor knows she has to find an escape plan before it’s too late. What weighs on her mind is her younger sister and brother who join her every night sleeping under her mother’s bed and hearing what no child should hear.

In another part of the city is fifteen-year-old Grace who lives a life of being privileged. Her father moved them to Mumbai where he becomes the CEO of one of India’s international banks. However, Grace’s perfect life is crushed when she sends a photo to a boy who places it on the internet and she is than cruelly ill-treated and shamed.

When the two girl’s life entangles together their will and strength will change forever. Noor and Grace, completely opposite of each other, are in a survival role and share the same emotions within the context of their lives. The storey carries messages of consequences, betrayal, hardship, friendship, however it also shows how everyone’s life is different but we must choose the right path…. ( )